


Genie Wishes

by orphan_account



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his dream, the genie asked Martin in a booming voice for three wishes, but Martin only had one.</p><p>“Make me Captain, a proper one, paid and professional,” he pleaded, but the genie insisted that such a wish was too difficult for even his own powers, it was simply impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Genie Wishes

When they got back after dropping a mariachi ensemble in Guadalajara, Martin was weary to the bone. He gratefully agreed to let Arthur drive him home. Carolyn was staying behind to file some paperwork or else he would never have gone. His van was in the repair shop for the engine. It was almost as temperamental as GERTI was.

Martin would have been content to sink back into the odd-smelling upholstery, tune out Arthur’s babbling, and doze off, but he made himself take out his battered green notebook and calculate how much money he had. His last Icarus Removals removal had been nearly two weeks ago, and the bill from the repair shop had been bigger than what he had been expecting.

The numbers were not promising. He did his figures two more times but the numbers refused to multiply. Martin rubbed his face with a tired sigh.

Arthur stopped halfway through rhapsodizing about carousels to give Martin a concerned look. He reached over to turn down the music, a woman wailing opera. Apparently Herc had gotten Carolyn hooked on it. They went nearly every week, although Carolyn still claimed she couldn’t stand it.

“What’s wrong, Skip?” Arthur asked. “You looked fine back at the airfield.”

“Nothing. I’m fine,” Marin mumbled, but he was so unconvincing, even Arthur could tell. At the sight of his earnest face, Martin gave in. “I just need to get a delivery job soon or else I’ll have to start skipping meals again.” Martin clamped his mouth shut. He had said more than he had meant to say.

Arthur was distraught. “That’s awful Skip! You shouldn’t skip meals or you’ll start losing your hair.” Arthur’s eyes went up to the top of Martin’s head, as if he expected a bald spot to already have started appearing.

Martin adjusted his hat self-consciously and shifted in his seat.“Well if I don’t deliver something soon, I won’t be able to keep my hair from falling out, much less pay the rent.”

Arthur went quiet for a while, for which Martin was grateful. They were just turning onto Martin’s street when Arthur spoke again.

“Skip! I have a brilliant idea. Why didn’t I think of this before? I know the perfect delivery job for you.”

Martin studied him suspiciously. Arthur’s brilliant ideas could be very dodgy.

“My cousin Jack is moving from a flat in Bristol to live in the country!”

“Your…cousin?” Martin asked. Since that nightmarish trip to Helsinki and also his unorthodox introduction to Gordon Shappey, Martin felt it was rather reasonable for him to be wary of Arthur’s relatives.

“Well, Jack isn’t exactly related to me. Jack’s father, Christopher, and Mum used to date. They used to live right next to us.” Arthur said this without any embarrassment. “Jack and I still kept in touch. Jack’s moving to the country for the summer to spend time with Christopher. He’s retired,” Arthur explained.

Martin thought for a bit. He found it hard to trust any plan of Arthur’s devising. But when he thought of how little food there was left in his pantry, he decided he really didn’t have much choice.

“All right, Arthur. Thank you,” Martin said, warmly.

“Brilliant! I’ll help too, Skip! It’s been ages since I’ve seen Jack. We’ll go after the Istanbul trip.”

Martin nodded. His van would be out of the repair shop by then. Arthur seemed ecstatic, and drove away singing along to the opera, his out-of-tune falsetto fading long after his car had vanished from sight.

It was nearly midnight when Martin trudged up to his attic room, feeling slightly less desperate now that he knew money was on the way. Even though he felt like he could sleep for a week, he still took the time to neatly hang up his uniform, pressing it carefully with a hot iron and putting it up in the front of his wardrobe. He liked having it the first thing he saw every morning. He rubbed the gold braid on his hat with the edge of his sleeve and put it away as well. Then, at last, he slipped into bed.

The students downstairs were having a party. Music was pulsing through the floorboards, a deep throbbing bass that was making the glass of his little window rattle almost imperceptibly. He could catch the sound of people laughing and talking. Martin knew that if he asked, they would be happy to let him join and have some drinks, but he would only feel out of place. They were all much younger, so much brighter. Butterflies while he was a moth. They would want to talk and he wouldn’t know what to say. They’d ask him to dance when he only wanted to stand still.

Martin thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep with all the noise but as soon as his eyes shut, he fell into a deep sleep.

In Martin’s dream, they were in Istanbul which seemed to have reverted back to the days of the Ottoman Empire. Instead of a Japanese tour group, their client was a sultan, dressed in lavish silk robes and an enormously ornate turban that had so much gold braid on it, it was a wonder the sultan could keep his head upright. It did tip to the side a couple times, in which times the sultan had two monkeys on either shoulder that would right it again.

The sultan had them moving his gold from one opulent palace to another. So much gold, a never-ending supply. Martin could buy so much with just a single gold coin. He’d never have to eat dry toast again, he could move into a nice flat. He could, he could.

But as soon as his fingers closed greedily around a gold coin, everything vanished, no more gold. Martin was instead left alone with a towering genie with a face as wrathful as Carolyn’s. In fact, it _was_ Carolyn’s face. Martin shrunk back but there was nowhere to hide.

The genie asked Martin in a booming voice for three wishes, but Martin only had one.

“Make me Captain, a proper one, paid and professional,” he pleaded, but the genie insisted that such a wish was too difficult for even his own powers, it was simply impossible.

And the genie disappeared in a puff of red smoke to become Arthur’s cousin, Jack, who Martin imagined to be like Simon, tall and successful-looking, in an expensively tailored suit. Jack drove away in Martin’s van while Douglas, Arthur and Carolyn stood motionless behind him.

Martin woke with a start, shooting upright and hitting his head against the slanting attic ceiling. He cursed loud enough for the students in the floor underneath to hear. The party seemed to have ended and the building was completely silent. Martin lay back down again, but falling asleep was much harder this time.

The trip to Istanbul was not half as exciting as Martin’s dream. Douglas was being moody. He wouldn’t say why but Martin suspected it had something to do with Helena. They passed the trip mostly in uncomfortable silence, with Martin occasionally attempting to start up a word game. Douglas would contribute once or twice before falling silent once more.

“D-Douglas, is everything all right?” Martin asked after a rather long and very tense silence. He wondered if he had accidentally done or said something to make Douglas angry with him.

“ _Fine_ ,” Douglas said.

“Because, you s-seem. Well, you’re not as…” Martin took a deep breath and tried again. “Douglas, what’s wrong?”

Douglas took a long time in answering. Martin was beginning to wonder if he had even heard his question, or if he was pretending not to.

“It’s my daughter,” he said at last, very quietly.

“Oh,” Martin said, surprised. He wasn’t sure what else to say. He realized he did not even know her name. He asked Douglas cautiously.

“Rebecca,” Douglas said, smiling distantly. “We named her after Rebecca in _Ivanhoe_. That was Helena’s favorite book.” He trailed off, his smile vanishing.

“What happened?”

“Helena wants full custody of her. She’s arguing that I don’t have enough time to spend with her, what with me flying GERTI so often.”

“Oh,” Martin said, awkwardly. He might as well have said nothing. Douglas was staring straight ahead, jaw set.

He had a wild idea.

“Douglas, I was just wondering you’d like to come with me on a delivery job? I have to take someone’s thing into the country. It would be a nice change. You know.”

“Oh my, could you be asking me out on a _date_?”

Martin turned pink. “No! Arthur’s coming too, it’s for his cousin, Jack.” Martin looked at Douglas hopefully. He had already seen the light come back into Douglas’s eyes, the amused glint he had whenever he was making Martin miserable.

“Yes, all right,” Douglas said. He sounded nonchalant, but there was a small smile on his lips, this one not distant like the one before.

They lapsed into another silence, this one far more enjoyable, and far less likely to make Martin want to fly GERTI into thunderstorm. Arthur was jubilant when he found out Douglas was coming with them, so much that he accidentally burnt their supper into an unidentifiable mess. It didn’t matter. They promised not to tell Carolyn.

After they got back from Istanbul, Martin had a thankfully dreamless night’s sleep. And the next morning, he picked up Douglas and Arthur, and they drove to Jack’s flat.

“This left here, Skip. Yes, it’s that brick building over there,” Arthur said, a map of the city open on his lap. Eager not to let him down, Arthur had spent nearly the whole night memorizing the route to Jack’s flat so he would be able to tell directions without getting them lost. Neither Martin nor Douglas had the heart to tell Arthur that this could have been done in less than three seconds using Douglas’s mobile phone.

“Good work, Arthur,” Douglas said, and Arthur beamed at him. When they picked him up, Douglas had looked rather regretful for agreeing to go with them (“As if I didn’t spend enough time locked up in a moving machine with you two,” he had muttered). But now, he seemed relieved to leave his flat. When his daughter was away, it was entirely too big for him, the walls stretched away from him, and everything too ominously quiet.

While Martin parked the van, Douglas reminded Martin he was merely coming along for managerial purposes. “And this time, I mean it,” he said. “That piano was a bloody terror.”

They went up to Jack’s flat and rang the doorbell. Arthur bounced on the balls of his feet, his excitement too enormous to be contained.

The door opened to reveal a young woman, a cigarette jutting from her mouth, wearing only a black jumper that barely went halfway down her thighs. She looked slightly overweight, her dark cropped hair making her face look even rounder.

“Arthur!” she exclaimed with girlish delight.

“Jack!” Arthur said, hugging her. They were both temporarily enveloped in cigarette smoke.

Martin turned to look at Douglas with mute, wide-eyed astonishment. Douglas looked as if he was trying very hard not to laugh.

“Blimey, Arthur. If I had known that your friend looked like this, I would have put some trousers on.” She winked right at Martin, who turned a magnificent shade of magenta. She chuckled at him, deep and throaty. Then she went to her room, supposedly to change, after telling them to make themselves comfortable.

Martin took Arthur aside. “I thought you said Jack was a bloke!”

“How could Jack be a bloke?” Arthur asked, thoroughly confused.

“Isn’t ‘Jack’ usually a name given to males, Arthur?”

“It’s short for Jacqueline. After her grandmother,” Arthur said, cheerfully.

“What’s wrong, Martin? Getting a littleflustered?” Douglas said in a low voice into Martin’s ear. Martin turned red again, but he had no chance to retort because Jack’s bedroom door opened. Instead of Jack, however, a  different girl came out, dressed in baggy, hot pink pyjamas. She blinked at them sleepily and seemed to be nursing a very bad hangover.

“Didn’t know we had guests over,” she yawned. “Thought you were robbers.”

“Oh, Christine, these are the guys who are moving my stuff,” Jack said, coming up behind her. She was thankfully wearing jeans now.

“Get a glass of water and go back to bed. I’ll call you when I get there,” Jack said, kissing Christine. Christine went back inside.

“You…you’re…you’re a…” Martin spluttered.

Jack grinned at him and turned to Arthur. “I’m ready!”

“Oh, are you coming with us then?” Douglas asked, sounding extremely amused.

“Of course I am. It _is_ my dad you’re driving to.”

Martin found it hard to argue this point. They (mostly he and Arthur) helped load Jack’s things into the back of Martin’s van. Douglas sat on the side talking with Jack as she smoked another cigarette.

Jack turned out to be great company. She told jokes that had them all tearing up with laughter. And she also dug up an impressive collection of CDs from her things. Her enthusiasm soon had them all singing along to old music.

“How’s Aunt Carolyn?” Jack asked Arthur, her voice gone slightly rougher from singing an entire David Bowie album.

“She’s doing great,” Arthur said. He was also a bit hoarse. Although he had claimed to know all the songs, he still had managed to sing completely different lyrics than anyone else. “MJN Air’s doing really great since we got that engine from Dad. It’s like our good luck charm.”

“ _Gordon_ gave you an engine?” Jack said, eyes wide.

“Oh, have you met him before, Jack?” Douglas asked.

“Yeah, what a wanker,” Jack said. “No offense, Arthur.”

Arthur shrugged, but did not contradict her.

“I’m sure he would run over an old lady if it meant he’d feel better about himself,” Jack continued, darkly. They all nodded.

Arthur launched into a fiery and highly elaborated re-telling of their trip to St. Petersburg. He told Jack about how Martin took control and against all odds landed safely. These odds included an exploded engine, third degree burns from a horrific coffee spill, Stalin’s ghost, a comatose first officer (Douglas looked mildly affronted), and a blizzard that even the most experienced pilot would find impossible to fly through. Martin became very warm, and he concentrated on the road.

Then, according to Arthur, Douglas miraculously came out of his coma and tricked Gordon into giving them a new engine. Jack clapped at the end of the story. Arthur took a little bow in his seat.

They stopped about halfway there because Arthur and Douglas need to go to the bathroom. Martin and Jack leaned against the side of the van as she blew lazy plumes of smoke into the air.

“Arthur told me about you, Martin,” Jack said, seriously. Her eyes were watching the smoke. “He’s very worried.”

“Yeah,” Martin said. He was overcome with a profound feeling of peacefulness and found it hard to say much else.

“I told Douglas, and I’ll tell you too. Something a man from Italy told me. Everything will be happy. And I’ve found it’s pretty much true.” She leaned her head against Martin’s shoulder. “Just look at Arthur.”

“Arthur?” Martin repeated. Jack’s hair tickled his nose slightly and he resisted the urge to sneeze. She smelled strongly of smoke.

“Yeah, he used to be really unhappy. It was a long time ago, back when Aunt Carolyn was still married to Gordon. He told me he used to feel so helpless, seeing that his dad made his mum unhappy, but not really able to do anything about it.”

“I had no idea,” Martin said softly. He had always imagined Arthur to be eternally happy.

“After they started MJN Air though, he got so much happier. I’ve never seen him so happy. He’s always talking about flying with you guys. And he really admires you, you know,” Jack said. “So, don’t lose hope, Martin. Promise?”

“I promise,” he said.

“Martin! Start the van!” Douglas’s voice shattered the silence. he and Arthur came tearing through the tall grass, an enormous grey dog snapping at their heels. Martin froze in shock. Jack had to grab his collar and push him into the driver’s seat. The van had already started moving when Arthur and Douglas jumped in, completely out of breath. They drove away quickly, until they could no longer hear the dog barking.

Then they looked at each other, hearts racing after being completely terrified, and burst out into uncontrollable laughter.

When they reached the little village where Jack’s father lived, they unloaded everything. Jack paid him twice his usual rate despite his protests. Douglas and Arthur made him keep all of it too, when he tried to split it with them.

Jack’s father welcomed them warmly with an enormous meal. According to Jack, he had gone to culinary school in Paris. It was delicious. Martin ate until he was bloated. And Jack’s father made them all take home leftovers. He also gave them a few choice stories of Carolyn in her wilder days, which they would be sure to remember the next time Carolyn ignored the wall chart.

They drove back after promising to keep in touch with Jack. And Martin felt that if a genie appeared in this instant to grant him a wish, he would have turned it away.

Everything would be happy.

And everything was. Jack must have done _something_ because all of a sudden, Martin had more van jobs than he knew what to do with, and they all tipped enormously. Pretty soon he’d have enough money to get a real flat.

Douglas was able to get half custody of Rebecca, which was more than he had hoped for. He was constantly whistling at work, and beat Martin at every word game they started.

And Arthur, well, was Arthur.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on my [tumblr](http://travellinglemon.tumblr.com/).


End file.
